Rosa Parks Day bill gets Alabama Senate committee approval

When 42-year-old secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger on December 1, 1955, she quickly became dubbed "the first lady of Civil Rights," helping spark a movement that would last throughout the Sixties. Her act of defiance against racist Jim Crow laws has been cemented as one of the most significant symbols of the civil rights movement in U.S. In a series of pictures, the world remembers her courageous act for racial equality with a series of pictures that capture of her life's work for justice and equal rights. From her now-iconic booking photo taken at the time of her arrest to Bill Clinton presenting Parks with the 1996 Presidential Medal of Freedom, these photos are a testament to the ongoing fight for equality that continues today.
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Rosa Parks holds up her arrest number as her mug is taken, left, and Rosa Parks and E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, talk at her March 19, 1956, trial at the Montgomery courthouse.(Photo: GENE HERRICK/AP FILE)

A Senate committee Tuesday approved a bill that would make Dec. 1 "Rosa Parks Day" in the state of Alabama.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, moves to the full Senate. Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, filed a similar bill in the House.

Montgomery Police arrested Parks on Dec. 1, 1955, after she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger in protest of state segregation laws. Parks' arrest triggered the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, now seen as a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

The bill does not make Rosa Parks Day a state holiday, on which all public offices in Alabama would close. Instead, the bill would give counties and cities the option of declaring Dec. 1 a local holiday.

Figures said Tuesday afternoon the African Methodist Episcopal Church was leading the effort. There are no plans to make it a formal holiday, she said, though Figures said she would fully support that.

"I would love it to be not just Rosa Parks Day on Dec. 1, when she made that grand gesture, but that it would become an Alabama state holiday," she said.

Parks, who lost her job as a seamstress as a result of her activism, left Montgomery in 1957 and eventually settled in Detroit. When she died in 2005, her body lay in repose at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Montgomery. The following year, the Montgomery City Council formally apologized for Parks' treatment.

"Obviously, we need to see the details of the legislation; but it would be our desire to honor Mrs. Parks in the most respectful and appropriate way,” Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said in a statement.

Alabama officially recognizes 15 legal holidays, though six of them share a date with another one. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee's birthdays are observed on the same Monday in January. Presidents Day in the state marks the births of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (though Jefferson was born in April). The second Monday in October is Columbus Day and Fraternal Day, as well as American Indian Heritage Day.